This page chronicles the efforts of CAIDA, ISC, DNS-OARC, many
partnering root nameserver operators and other organizations to
coordinate and conduct large-scale, simultaneous traffic data
collection events with the goal of capturing datasets of strategic
interest to researchers. Over the last several years, we have come
to refer to this project and related activities as "A Day in the
Life of the Internet" (DITL).

Motivation

In 2002, as part of our DNS research activities, CAIDA responded
to the Root Server System Advisory Committee's invitation to help
DNS root operators study and improve the integrity of the root
server system. In 2006, after a few more years of building trust
with these operators, we asked them to participate in a simultaneous
collection of a day of traffic to (and in some cases from) the DNS
root nameservers. We collaborated with the Internet Systems Consortium
(ISC) and DNS Operation and Research Center (DNS-OARC) to coordinate
four annual large-scale data collection events that took place in
January 2006, January 2007, March 2008, and March 2009. While these
measurements can be considered prototypes of a Day in the Life of
the Internet [1], their original
goal was to collect as complete a dataset as possible about the DNS
root servers operations and evolution, particularly as root operators
introduce new technologies, such as anycast, with no rigorous way
to evaluate their impacts in advance. As word of these experiments
spread, the number and diversity of participants and datasets grew.

Several complementary projects at CAIDA provided the impetus for
our first attempts to coordinate large-scale, distributed measurement
activities in late 2006. As part of an NSF-sponsored DNS measurement
project ( http://www.caida.org/funding/dns-itr/[8] ), CAIDA and ISC performed a
48-hour measurement event on dozens of root server anycast nodes.
Integrating recommendations based on lessons learned from previous
measurement experiments ( http://www.caida.org/research/dns/roottraffic/dnsroot_measurement_recommendations.xml[9] ), ISC coordinated the
collection of packet header traces from multiple anycast instances
of three root nameservers. To our knowledge, the 2006 event, and
each event since, stand as the largest scale simultaneous collections
from critical components of the global Internet infrastructure made
available to academic researchers. We consider these events
prototypes for eventual regular "Day in the Life of the Internet"
measurement events. Specifically, if you have access to or influence
over Internet measurement infrastructure and can contribute datasets
(anonymized according to your needs [10,11]),
please email ditl-info@caida.org for details regarding already
planned measurement dates, times, locations, and types of data.
(We conduct informal vetting to avoid manipulation of the experiments.)

We also seek input from others interested in gathering specific
complementary measurements on the same days, to help us maximize
the return on investment of participation in the experiment.

Commercial pressures make it next to impossible to get many types of
Internet measurement data to the research community, but empirical network
science is not possible without such data. As with similar efforts in
other disciplines [12], the proposed project involves building a global
cooperative community to support the simultaneous capture of a variety
of measurements from and across many strategic links around the globe
for further analysis by research scientists. Ideally, participating
partners would provide a variety of trace data: workload, topology,
routing, and performance, with privacy-sensitive techniques for
anonymization, aggregatation, or analysis appropriate to local
jurisdictions [13,14]. We hope that over time, annual measurement
activities to support "A Day in the Life of the Internet" data sets
will gather increasing momentum, including expanded partnerships with
public and private sector stakeholders, Internet infrastructure providers,
and educational networks, as well as legal and policy expertise
to advise and review privacy-protecting data disclosure control
mechanisms [15].

The table below lists the DITL-style Internet collection events and
their associated publications. The table also shows the growth
in interest from the global community of infrastructure operators
in need of resources to support regular, coordinated, simultaneous
collection events.

Working with Visiting Researcher, Mia Zhang, we developed an interactive web interface to the DNS-OARC data that enables users to view graphs
showing coverage, locations of open DNS resolvers in the address
space, the geography of clients, pollution, and distributions of
clients and queries across eight of 13 root nameservers.